Today, Morpheus
Data announced updates to its cloud management platform which will
help customers reduce tool sprawl while getting more value from existing
investments.

News highlights:

Enhanced automation for Kubernetes, Terraform, and Microsoft ARM

New and enhanced cloud connectors for Oracle, Azure, and T-Systems

Increasing momentum with managed service providers

The cloud management platform (CMP) market has evolved in recent years
with narrow feature sets giving way to providers who address
heterogeneous environments and broad issues including cost optimization,
secure self-service provisioning, data protection, and day-2 operations
such as logging and monitoring. Now, customer needs are expanding to
include DevOps initiatives.

According to recent Enterprise
Management Associates (EMA) research 71 percent of enterprises are
leveraging automation as part of IT modernization projects. "Declarative
automation, as found in technologies like Kubernetes and Terraform, is
the best way to abstract apps from infrastructure but exposes skill gaps
between developers and infrastructure teams," says Torsten Volk,
managing research director at EMA.

The Morpheus unified
multi-cloud orchestration platform combines simple and standardized
cloud management with application-centric DevOps automation giving it a
unique opportunity to bridge this gap. Today it extended its lead with
several tool and cloud enhancements which expose developer-friendly
features with ops-friendly interfaces.

"Traditional infrastructure-centric CMP offerings have stopped short
of truly addressing DevOps needs," said Brad Parks, VP of Business
Development, Morpheus Data. "With Morpheus, everybody gets what they
want - developers, operations, and executives all get to manage their
hybrid cloud their way."

Enabling greater developer agility with automation enhancements

Speed of application deployment is driving adoption of automation and
container technologies such as Kubernetes (K8s). However, EMA research
indicates less than 10 percent of enterprises plan to leverage
Kubernetes in its raw form, without commercial management software on
top. That's because maintenance of these tools falls to infrastructure
teams without the right skills. In fact, 43 percent of enterprises list
integration with existing tools and skill sets as the number 1
requirement for adoption of containers.

Morpheus helps customers meet this requirement with powerful
infrastructure-as-code application blueprints which are completely
infrastructure and cloud agnostic, blending the power of declarative
scripting with an intuitive graphical interface (GUI) designed for
everyday administrators needing a single point of control. Morpheus also
helps corporate IT extract
the most value from K8s by enabling teams to easily deploy and
manage K8s alongside other technologies.

With today's updates, customers can now utilize native K8s scripting as
part of Morpheus workflows. This announcement also extends Morpheus' own
JSON/YAML scripting framework to third party infrastructure-as-code
platforms starting with HashiCorp Terraform and Microsoft ARM. All of
these new integrations enable customers to leverage the full power of
third-party tools while consolidating analytics, reporting, governance,
monitoring, logging, and data protection across all clouds in an easy to
manage interface.

Giving infrastructure teams more flexibility for multi-cloud and
hybrid IT

In addition to automation, Morpheus reduces complexity by helping
customers standardize app-stack deployment across any public or private
cloud both on-premises and off. This balance of standardization and
flexibility is critical given that 68 percent of enterprises are
pursuing a multi-cloud strategy.

The latest Morpheus software release brings more
multi-cloud options including support for Oracle customers running
hybrid IT operations across Oracle VM and Oracle's public cloud
offering. Morpheus also augmented its native scaling engine for
customers who want to utilize native Microsoft Azure Scale Sets in Azure
and AzureStack deployments. For customers in Europe, the company added
integration with T-Systems Open Telecom Cloud which blends public-cloud
flexibility with private-cloud compliance. These updates are on top of
what is already the broadest set of cloud connectors in the industry.

Increasing momentum with MSPs and technology partners

As the digital transformation landscape continues to accelerate,
organizations are recognizing the difficulty of managing an increasingly
unpredictable array of cloud options and automation technologies.
Getting it right can mean a significant investment in tools, education,
training and skill development.

This is why many enterprises are turning to managed service providers to
fast track transformation projects. In fact, according to recent
research, the global market for managed IT services is growing at 11.5%
CAGR and expected to exceed $250 billion by 2021.

Joining the Morpheus family of MSPs is Exponential-e,
a leading provider of high-speed connectivity and managed application
services for over 2,800 customers in the United Kingdom. In combination
with Pivotal and Dell Technologies, Exponential-e has selected Morpheus
as the core enabler for its innovative cloud services.

"To create a truly unified service experience, you need to harness
the power of a multi-cloud and software-defined operating model,"
says Jon Bridges, Head of Cloud for Exponential-e. "Morpheus will
help us orchestrate on-premises, private and public cloud services for
our customers so they become next-generation internal service providers."

Morpheus enables internal IT to simplify service delivery and abstract
the complexity of underpinning infrastructure and vendor specific IaaS
and PaaS interfaces. Morpheus is not only 100 percent infrastructure and
platform agnostic it's also multi-tenant and supports white labeling,
enabling solution providers to deliver hosted multi-cloud orchestration
for their customers. Exponential-e joins MSPs such as OneNeck,
Technologent, Telia, and Ficolo who already utilize Morpheus to power
their cloud service offerings.